Fatherland Front

The Fatherland Front (VF) was an Austrian fascist political party that existed from 20 May 1933 to 13 March 1938, founded by Engelbert Dollfuss. The Fatherland Front was the dominant party of the Federal State of Austria, a single-party state that was influenced by Fascist Italy. The VF was opposed to socialism, free-market capitalism, and liberal democracy, and it favored the establishment of a Catholic corporate state that maintained its independence from Protestant Germany. In 1934, the VF defeated the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria in the Austrian Civil War, but the pro-German Austrian Nazi Party assassinated Dollfuss in July 1934. Kurt Schuschnigg took over the party after Dollfuss' assassination, and political pressure from the Nazi Party forced him to resign on 11 March 1938. The next day, Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht invaded Austria and annexed it in the Anschluss.